A Literary History of Ireland, from Earliest Times to the Present Day. Douglas Hyde
and happiness.
"And while they were there they saw a horrible spectral personage coming towards them from the South. Vehement were his steps and his rapid progress. The way he sped over the earth might be compared to the darting of a hawk down a cliff or to wind from off the green sea, and his left was towards the land [i.e., he came from the south along the shore].
"'Go meet him,' said Baile, 'and ask him where he goes, or whence he comes, or what is the cause of his haste.'
"'From Mount Leinster I come, and I go back now to the North, to the mouth of the river Bann; and I have no news but of the daughter of Lewy, son of Fergus, who had fallen in love with Baile mac Buain, and was coming to meet him. But the youths of Leinster overtook her, and she died from being forcibly detained, as Druids and fair prophets had prophesied, for they foretold that they would never meet in life, but that they would meet after death, and not part for ever. There is my news,' and he darted away from them like a blast of wind over the green sea, and they were not able to detain him.
"When Baile heard this he fell dead without life, and his tomb and his rath were raised, and his stone set up, and his funeral games were performed by the Ultonians.
"And a yew grew up through his grave, and the form and shape of Baile's head was visible on the top of it—whence the place is called Baile's Strand [now Dundalk].
"Afterwards the same man went to the South to where the maiden Aillinn was, and went into her grianan or sunny chamber.
"'Whence comes the man whom we do not know?' said the maiden.
"'From the northern half of Erin, from the mouth of the Bann I come, and I go past this to Mount Leinster.'
"'You have news?' said the maiden.
"'I have no news worth mentioning now, only I saw the Ultonians performing the funeral games and digging the rath, and setting up the stone, and writing the name of Baile mac Buain, the royal heir of Ulster, by the side of the strand of Baile, who died while on his way to meet a sweetheart and a beloved woman to whom he had given affection, for it was not fated for them to meet, in life, or for one of them to see the other living,' and he darted out after telling the evil news.
"And Aillinn fell dead without life, and her tomb was raised, etc. And an apple tree grew through her grave and became a great tree at the end of seven years, and the shape of Aillinn's head was upon its top.
"Now at the end of seven years poets and prophets and visioners cut down the yew which was over the grave of Baile, and they made a poet's tablet of it, and they wrote the visions and the espousals and the loves and the courtships of Ulster in it. [The apple tree which grew over the grave of Aillinn was also cut down] and in like manner the courtships of Leinster were written in it.
"There came a November eve long afterwards, and a festival was made to celebrate it by Art, the son of Conn [of the Hundred Battles, High-king of Ireland], and the professors of every science came to that feast as was their custom, and they brought their tablets with them. And these tablets also came there, and Art saw them, and when he saw them he asked for them; and the two tablets were brought and he held them in his hands face to face. Suddenly the one tablet of them sprang upon the other, and they became united the same as a woodbine round a twig, and it was not possible to separate them. And they were preserved like every other jewel in the treasury at Tara until it was burned by Dúnlang, son of Enna, at the time he burnt the Princesses at Tara, as has been said
"'The apple tree of noble Aillinn,
The yew of Baile—small inheritance—
Though they are introduced into poems
Unlearned people do not understand them.'
"and Ailbhé, daughter of Cormac, grandson of Conn [of the Hundred Battles] said too
"'What I liken Lumluine to
Is to the Yew of Baile's rath,
What I liken the other to
Is to the Apple Tree of Aillinn.'"
So far this strange tale. But poetic as it is, it yields—unlike most—its chief value when rationalised, for as O'Curry remarks, it was apparently invented to account for some inscribed tablets in the reign of King Art in the second century, which had—as we ourselves have seen in the case of so many leaves of very old manuscripts at this day—become fastened to each other, so that they clung inextricably together and could not be separated.
Now the massacre of the Princesses at Tara happened, according to the "Four Masters," in the year 241, when the tablets were burnt. Hence one of two things must be the case; the story must either have originated before that date to account for the sticking together of the tablets, or else some one must have invented it long afterwards, that is, must, without any apparent cause, have invented a story out of his own head, as to how there were once on a time two tablets made of trees which once grew on two tombs which were once fastened together before Art, son of Conn, and which were soon afterwards unfortunately burnt. A supposition which, considering there were then, ex hypothesi, no adhering tablets to prompt the invention, appears at first sight improbable.
Brash, who made personal examination of almost every Ogam known to exist, and whose standard work on the subject reproduces most of the inscriptions discovered up to the date of writing, was of opinion that no Ogam monument had anything Christian about it, and that if any Christian symbol were discovered on an Ogam stone, it must be of later date than the Ogam writing. Dr. Graves, however, has since shown that Ogam was in some few cases at least used over the graves of Christians; and he believes that all Ogam writing is really post-Christian, despite the absence of Christian emblems on the stones, and that it belongs to a comparatively modern period—"in fact, for the most part, to a time between the fifth and seventh century."[24] Brash's great work was supplemented by Sir Samuel Ferguson's, and since that time Professor Rhys[25] and Dr. Whitley Stokes have thrown upon the inscriptions themselves all the light that the highest critical acumen equipped with the completest philological training could do, and have, to quote Mr. Macalister, "between them reduced to order the confusion which almost seemed to warrant the cryptical theories, and have thereby raised Ogam inscriptions from the position of being mere learned playthings to a place of the highest philological importance, not only in Celtic but in Indo-European epigraphy." He himself—the latest to deal with the subject—waves for the present as "difficult—perhaps in some measure insoluble"—all "questions of the time, place, and manner of the development of the Ogham script."[26] Rhys has traced in certain of the inscriptions the influence exercised on the spoken language of the Celtic people by an agglutinating pre-Celtic tongue.[27] This gives us a glimpse at the pre-Aryan languages of the British Isles, which is in the highest degree interesting.
To me it seems probable that the Irish discovered the use of letters either through trade with the Continent or through the Romanised Britons, at any time from the first or second century onward. But how or why they invented the Ogam alphabet, instead of using Roman letters, or else Greek ones like the Gauls, is a profound mystery. One thing is certain, namely, that the Ogam alphabet—at whatever time invented—is a possession peculiar to the Irish Gael, and only to be found where he made his settlements.
[1] Dr. Jones, the Bishop of St. Davids, in his interesting book, "Vestiges of the Gael in Gwynedd" (North Wales) has come to the conclusion that the Irish occupied the whole of Anglesey, Carnarvon, Merioneth, and Cardiganshire, with at least portions of Denbighshire, Montgomery, and Radnor. Their occupation of part of the south and south-west of England is attested by the area of Ogam finds.
[2] "Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars," p. 39. I find Migne, in his note on Pelagius,